Growing Individually Together Quotes

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.

I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only way to grow together, instead of apart.

I nod, thinking of how difficult marriage can be, how much effort is required to sustain a feeling between two people - a feeling that you can't imagine will ever fade in the beginning when everything comes so easily. I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That is the only real way to grow together, instead of apart.

For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word. But one day, she looked at a page and the word "mouse" had instantaneous meaning. She looked at the word, and the picture of a gray mouse scampered through her mind. She looked further and when she saw "horse," she heard him pawing the ground and saw the sun glint on his glossy coat. The word "running" hit her suddenly and she breathed hard as though running herself. The barrier between the individual sound of each letter and the whole meaning of the word was removed and the printed word meant a thing at one quick glance. She read a few pages rapidly and almost became ill with excitement. She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read!

When trees grow together, nutrients and water can be optimally divided among them all so that each tree can grow into the best tree it can be. If you "help" individual trees by getting rid of their supposed competition, the remaining trees are bereft. They send messages out to their neighbors in vain, because nothing remains but stumps. Every tree now muddles along on its own, giving rise to great differences in productivity. Some individuals photosynthesize like mad until sugar positively bubbles along their trunk. As a result, they are fit and grow better, but they aren't particularly long-lived. This is because a tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it. And there are now a lot of losers in the forest. Weaker members, who would once have been supported by the stronger ones, suddenly fall behind. Whether the reason for their decline is their location and lack of nutrients, a passing malaise, or genetic makeup, they now fall prey to insects and fungi. But isn't that how evolution works? you ask. The survival of the fittest? Their well-being depends on their community, and when the supposedly feeble trees disappear, the others lose as well. When that happens, the forest is no longer a single closed unit. Hot sun and swirling winds can now penetrate to the forest floor and disrupt the moist, cool climate. Even strong trees get sick a lot over the course of their lives. When this happens, they depend on their weaker neighbors for support. If they are no longer there, then all it takes is what would once have been a harmless insect attack to seal the fate even of giants.

A society built entirely out of rational individuals who come together on the basis of a social contract for the sake of the satisfaction of their wants cannot form a society that would be viable over any length of time. —FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

Stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temples stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each others shadow.

These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori. 1. The first stage enlightenment: A Glimpse of the Whole The first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being. The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego. There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence. You and existence meet and merge for a moment. And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart. 2. The second stage of enlightenment: Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner Being The second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom. The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen. Your own wisdom from within has arisen. A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment. The Hindus has three names for the ego: 1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego. 2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego. 3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being. In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness. For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God. Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear. Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God. Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction. 3. The third stage of enlightenment: Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure being At the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean. At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole. It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky. The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality. You can find the gap whenever you want. This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God. You have found the door to God. You have come home.

I just want a life of happiness, laughter and possibility, I want a passion that I call my job, to pay my bills. I want to spend my time, eating good food & making unremarkable memories with the family I have left. I want friends that can be honest enough to tell me, if I fuck up, so I can fix it & also beautiful enough to know when I'm lieing in my smile. I want a lover who isn't afraid to love me with every inch of his heart but also fearless in keeping his individual voice as we grow together. And I will have all of it, because I believe I am worthy of it.

There is no such thing in a civilized society as self-support. In a state of society so barbarous as not even to know family cooperation, each individual may possibly support himself, though even then for a part of his life only; but from the moment that men begin to live together, and constitute even the rudest of society, self-support becomes impossible. As men grow more civilized, and the subdivision of occupations and services is carried out, a complex mutual dependence becomes the universal rule. Every man, however solitary may seem his occupation, is a member of a vast industrial partnership, as large as the nation, as large as humanity. The necessity of mutual dependence should imply the duty and guarantee of mutual support...

We must live in stories. It must be a path we walk, part of the glue that holds us together. Individuals must unite themselves to a body well-formed in love so that we grow up into the logos himself, who is the head. Without that extra step, we will ultimately be dispersed like smoke like wax before the fire.

Oh, magic hour when a child first knows it can read printed words! For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word. But, one day, she looked at a page and the word "mouse" had instantaneous meaning. She looked at the word, and a picture of a gray mouse scampered through her mind. She looked further and when she saw "horse," she heard him pawing the ground and saw the sun glint on his glossy coat. The word "running" hit her suddenly and she breathed hard as though running herself. The barrier between he individual sound of each letter and the whole meaning of the word was removed and the printed word meant a thing at one quick glance. She read a few pages rapidly and almost became ill with excitement. She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read! From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came to adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.

Each bump or challenge in our intimate connections offers us a perfect opportunity to deepen our level of intimacy, while allowing us to grow and evolve both individually and together.

Anarchism proposes to rescue the self-respect and independence of the individual from all restraint and invasion by authority. Only in freedom can man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will he learn to think and move, and give the very best in him. Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the social bonds which knit men together, and which are the true foundation of a normal social life.

I was growing inward incessantly; like an animal that hibernates during the wintertime, I could hear other peoples' voices with my ears; my own voice, however, I could hear only in my throat. The loneliness and the solitude that lurked behind me were like a condensed, thick, eternal night, like one of those nights with a dense, persistent, sticky darkness which waits to pounce on unpopulated cities filled with lustful and vengeful dreams. My whole being could now be summed up in my voice―an insane, absolute record. The force that, out of loneliness, brings two individuals together to procreate has its roots in this same insanity which exists in everyone and which is mingled with a sense of regret, tending gradually toward death...Only death does not tell lies! The presence of death annihilates all that is imaginary. We are the offspring of death and death delivers us from the tantalizing, fraudulent attractions of life; it is death that beckons us from the depths of life.

We know it is good to receive, and we have been blessed by receiving not only as children, but also as adults. Yet Jesus taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), and part of growing up is learning the art of giving. If we fail to learn this art, we will live unfulfilled lives, and in the end, chains of bondage will replace the bonds that keep our communities together. If we just keep taking or even trading, we will squander ourselves. If we give, we will regain ourselves as fulfilled individuals and flourishing communities.

Aging brings out the flavors of a personality. The individual emerges over time, the way fruit matures and ripens. In the Renaissance view, depression, aging, and individuality all go together: the sadness of growing old is part of becoming an individual. Melancholy thoughts carve out an interior space where wisdom can take up residence. Saturn

Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers. Further, it is truly international in scope. Any particular advance has been preceded by the contributions of those from many lands who have set firm foundations for further developments. The Nobel awards should be regarded as giving recognition to this general scientific progress as well as to the individuals involved. Further, science is a collaborative effort. The combined results of several people working together is often much more effective than could be that of an individual scientist working alone.

Some things you carry around inside you as though they were part of your blood and bones, and when that happens, there’s nothing you can do to forget …But I had never been much of a believer. If anything, I believed that things got worse before they got better. I believed good people suffered... people who have faith were so lucky; you didn’t want to ruin it for them. You didn’t want to plant doubt where there was none. You had to treat suck individuals tenderly and hope that some of whatever they were feeling rubs off on you Those who love you will love you forever, without questions or boundaries or the constraints of time. Daily life is real, unchanging as a well-built house. But houses burn; they catch fire in the middle of the night. The night is like any other night of disaster, with every fact filtered through a veil of disbelief. The rational world has spun so completely out of its orbit, there is no way to chart or expect what might happen next At that point, they were both convinced that love was a figment of other people’s imaginations, an illusion fashioned out of smoke and air that really didn’t exist Fear, like heat, rises; it drifts up to the ceiling and when it falls down it pours out in a hot and horrible rain True love, after all, could bind a man where he didn’t belong. It could wrap him in cords that were all but impossible to break Fear is contagious. It doubles within minutes; it grows in places where there’s never been any doubt before The past stays with a man, sticking to his heels like glue, invisible and heartbreaking and unavoidable, threaded to the future, just as surely as day is sewn to night He looked at girls and saw only sweet little fuckboxes, there for him to use, no hearts involved, no souls, and, most assuredly no responsibilities. Welcome to the real world. Herein is the place where no one can tell you whether or not you’ve done the right thing. I could tell people anything I wanted to, and whatever I told them, that would be the truth as far as they were concerned. Whoever I said I was, well then, that’s who id be The truths by which she has lived her life have evaporated, leaving her empty of everything except the faint blue static of her own skepticism. She has never been a person to question herself; now she questions everything Something’s, are true no matter how hard you might try to bloc them out, and a lie is always a lie, no matter how prettily told You were nothing more than a speck of dust, good-looking dust, but dust all the same Some people needed saving She doesn’t want to waste precious time with something as prosaic as sleep. Every second is a second that belongs to her; one she understands could well be her last Why wait for anything when the world is so cockeyed and dangerous? Why sit and stare into the mirror, too fearful of what may come to pass to make a move? At last she knows how it feels to take a chance when everything in the world is at stake, breathless and heedless and desperate for more She’ll be imagining everything that’s out in front of them, road and cloud and sky, all the elements of a future, the sort you have to put together by hand, slowly and carefully until the world is yours once more

the trend for rewilding our cities is growing. It’s positive, it enlightens, it’s widespread, and it helps. We need to retrofit and reimagine cities as planet-friendly citadels. They’re our hives and reefs. Sea mussels aren’t the only animals living in individual shells that are glued together.

Every tree, therefore, is valuable to the community and worth keeping around for as long as possible. And that is why even sick individuals are supported and nourished until they recover. Next time, perhaps it will be the other way round, and the supporting tree might be the one in need of assistance. When thick silver-gray beeches behave like this, they remind me of a herd of elephants. Like the herd, they, too, look after their own, and they help their sick and weak back up onto their feet. They are even reluctant to abandon their dead. Every tree is a member of this community, but there are different levels of membership. For example, most stumps rot away into humus and disappear within a couple of hundred years (which is not very long for a tree). Only a few individuals are kept alive over the centuries, like the mossy "stones" I've just described. What's the difference? Do tree societies have second-class citizens just like human societies? It seems they do, though the idea of "class" doesn't quite fit. It is rather the degree of connection-or maybe even affection-that decides how helpful a tree's colleagues will be. You can check this out for yourself simply by looking up into the forest canopy. The average tree grows its branches out until it encounters the branch tips of a neighboring tree of the same height. It doesn't grow any wider because the air and better light in this space are already taken. However, it heavily reinforces the branches it has extended, so you get the impression that there's quite a shoving match going on up there. But a pair of true friends is careful right from the outset not to grow overly thick branches in each other's direction. The trees don't want to take anything away from each other, and so they develop sturdy branches only at the outer edges of their crowns, that is to say, only in the direction of "non-friends." Such partners are often so tightly connected at the roots that sometimes they even die together.

Only way to grow together as a couple, is to nourish each other's individual growth.

My thoughts on the descent of our moral prejudices – for that is what this polemic is about – were first set out in a sketchy and provisional way in the collection of aphorisms entitled Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits, which I began to write in Sorrento during a winter that enabled me to pause, like a wanderer pauses, to take in the vast and dangerous land through which my mind had hitherto travelled. This was in the winter of 1876–7; the thoughts themselves go back further. They were mainly the same thoughts which I shall be taking up again in the present essays – let us hope that the long interval has done them good, that they have become riper, brighter, stronger and more perfect! The fact that I still stick to them today, and that they themselves in the meantime have stuck together increasingly firmly, even growing into one another and growing into one, makes me all the more blithely confident that from the first, they did not arise in me individually, randomly or sporadically but as stemming from a single root, from a fundamental will to knowledge deep inside me which took control, speaking more and more clearly and making ever clearer demands. And this is the only thing proper for a philosopher. We have no right to stand out individually: we must not either make mistakes or hit on the truth individually. Instead, our thoughts, values, every ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘if ’ and ‘but’ grow from us with the same inevitability as fruits borne on the tree – all related and referring to one another and a testimonial to one will, one health, one earth, one sun. – Do you like the taste of our fruit? – But of what concern is that to the trees? And of what concern is it to us philosophers? . . .

Imagine,” I thought, “a world in which brothers and sisters grow up in homes where hurting isn’t allowed; where children are taught to express their anger at each other sanely and safely; where each child is valued as an individual, not in relation to the others; where cooperation, rather than competition is the norm; where no one is trapped in a role; where children have daily experience and guidance in resolving their differences.

Compared to kids confined indoors, children who regularly play in nature show heightened motor control—including balance, coordination, and agility. They tend to engage more in imaginative and creative play, which in turn fosters language, abstract reasoning, and problem-solving skills, together with a sense of wonder. Nature play is superior at engendering a sense of self and a sense of place, allowing children to recognize both their independence and interdependence. Play in outdoor settings also exceeds indoor alternatives in fostering cognitive, emotional, and moral development. And individuals who spend abundant time playing outdoors as children are more likely to grow up with a strong attachment to place and an environmental ethic.

The accumulation of gold in the treasury of private individuals is the ruin of timocracy; they invent illegal modes of expenditure; for what do they or their wives care about the law? Yes, indeed. And then one, seeing another grow rich, seeks to rival him, and thus the great mass of the citizens become lovers of money. Likely enough. And so they grow richer and richer, and the more they think of making a fortune the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are placed together in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls. True. And in proportion as riches and rich men are honoured in the State, virtue and the virtuous are dishonoured. Clearly. And what is honoured is cultivated, and that which has no honour is neglected.

It's like Romeo & Juliet,' I say. 'You can't separate them. Otherwise, there would be no Shakespeare.' Silence. I decide to be more straightforward. I tell him, 'Nothing frightens me anymore. I am not even afraid to die.' Bussey's eyes, already wide open, grow even wider. My death is the last thing he needs. I have the strange feeling that there are two of me. One observes the conversation while the other does the talking. Everything is abnormal, especially this extreme calm that has taken me over. I try to explain to Bussey that if I decide to die, it will be without bitterness. I know I did everything I possibly could, so it will be respectful farewell. I will bow to life like an actor, who, having delivered his lines, bends deeply to his audience & retires. I tell Bussey that this decision has nothing to do with him, that it is entirely mine. I will choose either to live or to die, but I cannot allow myself to live in the in-between. I do not want to go through life like a ghost. 'Do you think you'll find Danny this way?' Bussey asks. My mind sifts through all available theories on the afterlife. It is as if this metaphysical question has become as real as the air we breathe. Buddhism teaches that life is an eternal cycle without beginning or end. I recall the metaphor: "Our individual lives are like waves produced from the great ocean that is the universe. The emergence of a wave is life, and its abatement is death. This rhythm repeats eternally." Finally I answer Bussey, 'No, I don't think so.' Bussey seems relieved, but I'm more panicky, because I had never thought that I could wind up alone. In my mind, whatever the odds, Danny & I were & would be together forever.

IIf having people tell us apart is the first step towards independence, it's a simple thing. We just have to change the way we look on the outside. We should've done something like this sooner. We always blames other people for not being able to tell us apart...but maybe the reality is that we didn't put forth the effort so others could see the difference. If all we needed to do something as simple as this, I'm happy to do it. And if you want, Kaoru, I'm happy to have separate rooms too. But...nothing will ever change the fact that we are twins! I thought about it all night..and I remembered something Milord one said. Kaoru...you're wrong. It may be true that we can't continue on as we had before. Because if I'm dependent on you, nobody will take me seriously, least of all Haruhi. But to kill her emotions like this enforcer soaps to live separate lives isn't the only way to become independent, is it? Kaoru..we are twins. We share something very lucky and rare. It's called character. We may contradict ourselves but that's the way we are. Even the future, which most people alone face we face together. It's not a bad thing. From now on, we will influence each other and continue to grow individually.as long as we don't forget this or future will be many more times exciting that of most people. So we will remain close because if we don't do it be no point being born twins." -Hikaru

There is a vast difference between being a Christian and being a disciple. The difference is commitment. Motivation and discipline will not ultimately occur through listening to sermons, sitting in a class, participating in a fellowship group, attending a study group in the workplace or being a member of a small group, but rather in the context of highly accountable, relationally transparent, truth-centered, small discipleship units. There are twin prerequisites for following Christ - cost and commitment, neither of which can occur in the anonymity of the masses. Disciples cannot be mass produced. We cannot drop people into a program and see disciples emerge at the end of the production line. It takes time to make disciples. It takes individual personal attention. Discipleship training is not about information transfer, from head to head, but imitation, life to life. You can ultimately learn and develop only by doing. The effectiveness of one's ministry is to be measured by how well it flourishes after one's departure. Discipling is an intentional relationship in which we walk alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ. This includes equipping the disciple to teach others as well. If there are no explicit, mutually agreed upon commitments, then the group leader is left without any basis to hold people accountable. Without a covenant, all leaders possess is their subjective understanding of what is entailed in the relationship. Every believer or inquirer must be given the opportunity to be invited into a relationship of intimate trust that provides the opportunity to explore and apply God's Word within a setting of relational motivation, and finally, make a sober commitment to a covenant of accountability. Reviewing the covenant is part of the initial invitation to the journey together. It is a sobering moment to examine whether one has the time, the energy and the commitment to do what is necessary to engage in a discipleship relationship. Invest in a relationship with two others for give or take a year. Then multiply. Each person invites two others for the next leg of the journey and does it all again. Same content, different relationships. The invitation to discipleship should be preceded by a period of prayerful discernment. It is vital to have a settled conviction that the Lord is drawing us to those to whom we are issuing this invitation. . If you are going to invest a year or more of your time with two others with the intent of multiplying, whom you invite is of paramount importance. You want to raise the question implicitly: Are you ready to consider serious change in any area of your life? From the outset you are raising the bar and calling a person to step up to it. Do not seek or allow an immediate response to the invitation to join a triad. You want the person to consider the time commitment in light of the larger configuration of life's responsibilities and to make the adjustments in schedule, if necessary, to make this relationship work. Intentionally growing people takes time. Do you want to measure your ministry by the number of sermons preached, worship services designed, homes visited, hospital calls made, counseling sessions held, or the number of self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus? When we get to the shore's edge and know that there is a boat there waiting to take us to the other side to be with Jesus, all that will truly matter is the names of family, friends and others who are self initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus because we made it the priority of our lives to walk with them toward maturity in Christ. There is no better eternal investment or legacy to leave behind.

For so long, I was stuck in "either or" thinking. Either I had to change myself, or change the world. Either it was his fault or my fault. Either you had to stop acting that way or I had to stop reacting this way. Either there was something wrong with me or something wrong with them. I would fluctuate between both ends of this dynamic. I'd blame myself for some time and do everything I could to change. When that became tiresome, I'd blame the other, doing everything I could to make them change. When the resentment and frustration became too strong, I'd blame myself again. I've learned that it's never either or. It's always both. I've also learned that, because it's always both, there's no such thing as fault. Fault is only something we can ascribe when we see things superficially. When we look deeper, we see multi-layered, complex systems of causes and effects which affect and are affected by all individuals involved. Fault is a useless concept. Responsibility, however, is the most helpful concept of them all. It's not my fault. It's not his or yours or theirs either. But it is all our responsibility. When we come together like this, we don't have to see-saw back and forth, passing on guilt and blame. We can grow. We can evolve. We can build a better world.

As you grow in influence, you’ll find that more and more people want you to care about things. Someone’s putting together a best practices document for how your organization does code review, and they want your opinion. Your group is doing a hiring push and needs help deciding what to interview for. There’s a deprecation that would be making more progress if it had a staff engineer drumming up senior sponsorship. And that’s just Monday morning. What do you do?

It was just heteronormative bullshit, a societal compulsion to thrust independent and perfectly happy individuals together in a socially accepted way, so they could become vulnerable before ultimately growing too familiar with each other’s flaws and engaging in destructive behavior that would result in the heart of at least one party being crushed. Behavior such as, for example, shagging their neighbor and blaming it on their girlfriend’s supposed inattentiveness.

What is the purpose of a nation if not to empower human beings to live better together than they could individually? When government fails to meet the basic needs of humanity for food, shelter, clothing, and even more important—the room to grow and evolve—the people will begin to rely on one another, to pool their resources and rise above the artificial limitations of tradition or law. Each of us has something significant to contribute to society be it physical, material, intellectual, emotional, or spiritual

The highest quality of an individual is to be human. The phrase “to be human” means to follow life wherever it may lead, up and down, down and up, from the bottom of the world to the top, from darkness into light, through each degree of good and evil. As the circle of knowledge widens, life grows more beautiful and heroic. We are part of everything—men, books, cities, railroads—all made from the same atoms and molecules, all living together and dying together, joined into one imperishable unity that can never be divided.

Here we’ll describe four signs that you have to disengage from your autonomous efforts and seek connection. Each of these emotions is a different form of hunger for connection—that is, they’re all different ways of feeling lonely: When you have been gaslit. When you’re asking yourself, “Am I crazy, or is there something completely unacceptable happening right now?” turn to someone who can relate; let them give you the reality check that yes, the gaslights are flickering. When you feel “not enough.” No individual can meet all the needs of the world. Humans are not built to do big things alone. We are built to do them together. When you experience the empty-handed feeling that you are just one person, unable to meet all the demands the world makes on you, helpless in the face of the endless, yawning need you see around you, recognize that emotion for what it is: a form of loneliness. ... When you’re sad. In the animated film Inside Out, the emotions in the head of a tween girl, Riley, struggle to cope with the exigencies of growing up.... When you are boiling with rage. Rage has a special place in women’s lives and a special role in the Bubble of Love. More, even, than sadness, many of us have been taught to swallow our rage, hide it even from ourselves. We have been taught to fear rage—our own, as well as others’—because its power can be used as a weapon. Can be. A chef’s knife can be used as a weapon. And it can help you prepare a feast. It’s all in how you use it. We don’t want to hurt anyone, and rage is indeed very, very powerful. Bring your rage into the Bubble with your loved ones’ permission, and complete the stress response cycle with them. If your Bubble is a rugby team, you can leverage your rage in a match or practice. If your Bubble is a knitting circle, you might need to get creative. Use your body. Jump up and down, get noisy, release all that energy, share it with others. “Yes!” say the people in your Bubble. “That was some bullshit you dealt with!” Rage gives you strength and energy and the urge to fight, and sharing that energy in the Bubble changes it from something potentially dangerous to something safe and potentially transformative.

It is not we as individuals, then, who must bend uncomfortably around the institution of marriage; rather it is the institution of marriage that has to bend uncomfortably around US. Because "they" (the powers that be) have never been entirely able to stop "us" (two people) from connecting our lives together and creating a secret world of our own. And so "they" eventually have no choice but to legally permit "us" to marry, in some shape or form, no matter how restrictive their ordinaces may appear. (...) So perhaps I've had this story deliciously backwards the whole time. To somehow suggest that society invented marriage, and then forced human beings to bond with each other, is perhaps absurd. It's like suggesting that society invented dentists, and then forced people to grow teeth. WE invented marriage. Couples invented marriage. We also invented divorce, mind you. And we invented infidelity, too, as well as romantic misery. In fact, we invented the whole damn sloppy mess of love and intimacy and aversion and euphoria and failure. But most importantly of all, most subversively of all, most stubbornly of all, we invented privacy.

there is no space in a relationship -that may die easily by suffocation . partner has to understand being together does not mean keeping each other wallet or bank locker keys. mostly women leave such things on men ,but men hold the keys with them most in cases .though other side do the same .this is big reason we misunderstand our space freedom . relationship dies when one of partner cross this space and interfere the free air of individuality . now question is __ then it is relationship. we love each other . we must share our secrets ." the fact is you must respect your relationship . it is not to own .it is for living .worth to grow in individuality .

We are not gods, and simply do not have the capacity to rectify imbalances of innate individual qualities. We have the ability to treat everyone equally under law; we have the ability to create governments to protect individual rights. But we don’t have the ability to guarantee that even two kids the same age living on the same street will start from the same point; two children growing up in the same family don’t even start from the same point. We certainly don’t have the ability to ensure that everyone ends at the same point. Setting up all Americans as either purveyors of a hierarchical and discriminatory system or as victims of that system, we disintegrate the ties that bind Americans together.

You know what the best course I ever took at college was? Biology. We studied evolution. And I learned something important.’ Now he included Leonard in his gaze. ‘It helped me choose my career. For thousands, no, millions of years we had these huge brains, the neo-cortex, right? But we didn’t speak to each other, and we lived like fucking pigs. There was nothing. No language, no culture, nothing. And then, suddenly, wham! It was there. Suddenly it was something we had to have, and there was no turning back. So why did it suddenly happen?’ Russell shrugged. ‘Hand of God?’ ‘Hand of God my ass. I’ll tell you why. Back then we all used to hang out together all day long doing the same thing. We lived in packs. So there was no need for language. If there was a leopard coming, there was no point saying, Hey man, what’s coming down the track? A leopard! Everyone could see it, everyone was jumping up and down and screaming, trying to scare it off. But what happens when someone goes off on his own for a moment’s privacy? When he sees a leopard coming, he knows something the others don’t. And he knows they don’t know. He has something they don’t, he has a secret, and this is the beginning of his individuality, of his consciousness. If he wants to share his secret and run down the track to warn the other guys, then he’s going to need to invent language. From there grows the possibility of culture. Or he can hang back and hope the leopard will take out the leadership that’s been giving him a hard time. A secret plan, that means more individuation, more consciousness.’ The band was starting to play a fast, loud number. Glass had to shout his conclusion, ‘Secrecy made us possible,’ and Russell raised his beer to salute the theory.

The frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might have felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of the previous day; the rack of the past night's suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled along. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race. They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things — oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp — yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to. The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one hand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others, shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for their fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them!

The causal relationship between factors in nature are just too entangled for man to unravel through research and analysis. Perhaps science succeeds in advancing one slow step at a time, but because it does so while groping in total darkness along a road without end, it is unable to know the real truth of things. This is why scientists are pleased with partial explications and see nothing wrong with pointing a finger and proclaiming this to be the cause and that the effect. The more research progresses, the larger the body of scholarly data grows. The antecedent causes of causes increase in number and depth, becoming incredibly complex, such that, far from unraveling the tangled web of cause and effect, science succeeds only in explaining in ever greater detail each of the bends and kinks in the individual threads. There being infinite causes for an event or action, there are infinite solutions as well, and these together deepen and broaden to infinite complexity.

It's when you realize that two individuals are not growing together, that they're growing apart. At that time, you realize in that growing apart, that they're not so much growing apart but with the understanding of magnetics and relationships, they're being pulled apart. There's a sort of repulsion happening, that the disagreement between them is greater than the agreement, and that disagreement is magnetically pushing them away from each other. An observance and awareness are needed of the actual repulsion. But with all things, if those individuals choose to see that the repulsion is happening and do not wish for it they can always choose to find common ground and reverse that effect, and begin to attract in a very harmonic way. But in disharmony, there's only a matter of when it will naturally happen. Generally, in a universal sense we try not to force these occurrences it must occur naturally. When you see that the disagreement and disharmony are greater than the agreement and harmony then it will become a natural repulsion that will create the separation.

recent research indicates that unstructured play in natural settings is essential for children’s healthy growth. As any parent or early childhood educator will attest, play is an innate drive. It is also the primary vehicle for youngsters to experience and explore their surroundings. Compared to kids confined indoors, children who regularly play in nature show heightened motor control—including balance, coordination, and agility. They tend to engage more in imaginative and creative play, which in turn fosters language, abstract reasoning, and problem-solving skills, together with a sense of wonder. Nature play is superior at engendering a sense of self and a sense of place, allowing children to recognize both their independence and interdependence. Play in outdoor settings also exceeds indoor alternatives in fostering cognitive, emotional, and moral development. And individuals who spend abundant time playing outdoors as children are more likely to grow up with a strong attachment to place and an environmental ethic. When asked to identify the most significant environment of their childhoods, 96.5 percent of a large sample of adults named an outdoor environment. In

In the early years of contemporary feminist movement, solidarity between women was often equated with the formation of "safe" spaces where groups of presumably like-minded women could come together, sharing ideas and experiences without fear of silencing or rigorous challenges. Groups sometimes disintegrated when the speaking of diverse opinion lead to contestation, confrontation, and out-and-out conflict. It was common for individual dissenting voices to be silenced by the collective demand for harmony. Those voices were at times punished by exclusion and ostracization. Before it became politically acceptable to discuss issues of race and racism within feminist circles, I was one of those "undesirable" voices. Always a devout advocate of feminist politics, I was, and am, also constantly interrogating and, if need be, harsh in my critique. I learned powerful lessons from hanging in there, continuing to engage in feminist movement even when that involvement was not welcomed. Significantly, I learned that any progressive political movement grows and matures only to the degree that it passionately welcomes and encourages, in theory and in practice, diversity of opinion, new ideas, critical exchange, and dissent.

The gorgonians tend to grow in closely packed, branching masses, but they do not fuse to each other; if they did, their morphogenesis would doubtless become a shambles. Theodor, in a series of elegant experiments, has shown that when two individuals of the same species are placed in close contact, the smaller of the two will always begin to disintegrate. It is autodestruction due to lytic mechanisms entirely under the governance of the smaller partner. He is not thrown out, not outgamed, not outgunned; he simply chooses to bow out. It is not necessarily a comfort to know that such things go on in biology, but it is at least an agreeable surprise. The oxygen in the atmosphere is the exhalation of the chloroplasts living in plants (also, for our amazement, in the siphons of giant clams and lesser marine animals). It is a natural tendency for genetically unrelated cells in tissue culture to come together, ignoring species differences, and fuse to form hybrid cells. Inflammation and immunology must indeed be powerfully designed to keep us apart; without such mechanisms, involving considerable effort, we might have developed as a kind of flowing syncytium over the earth, without the morphogenesis of even a flower.

Letter to read on your way to Success Dear Me If you see someone successful. Don't envy them, but rather remind yourself that we all had to start somewhere. I mean if you think about it we were all kids at once with big dreams. What separates us as we grow older is the choices we had to make along the way. Shakespeare to put it well when he said, "some are born into greatness and others simply choose to be." I simply love these to quotes when you put them together, "Don't compare yourself with others cause it is because were different that each of us is special" and "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will always seem like failure to you." The message here is that we are all good at something. So if you haven't made it thus far, don't be to hard on yourself by comparing yourself with others, cause you know nothing about their journey. We are all on our own individual paths in life. Some people have already given themselves the job of trying to put you down every chance they get, don't make it worse for yourself by doing the same. Its never to late to be what you always wanted to be. But before you start on your journey be sure what that is exactly, so as to prevent you climbing a ladder only to end up on the wrong wall.

So many synapses,' Drisana said. 'Ten trillion synapses in the cortex alone.' Danlo made a fist and asked, 'What do the synapses look like?' 'They're modelled as points of light. Ten trillion points of light.' She didn't explain how neurotransmitters diffuse across the synapses, causing the individual neurons to fire. Danlo knew nothing of chemistry or electricity. Instead, she tried to give him some idea of how the heaume's computer stored and imprinted language. 'The computer remembers the synapse configuration of other brains, brains that hold a particular language. This memory is a simulation of that language. And then in your brain, Danlo, select synapses are excited directly and strengthened. The computer speeds up the synapses' natural evolution.' Danlo tapped the bridge of his nose; his eyes were dark and intent upon a certain sequence of thought. 'The synapses are not allowed to grow naturally, yes?' 'Certainly not. Otherwise imprinting would be impossible.' 'And the synapse configuration – this is really the learning, the essence of another's mind, yes?' 'Yes, Danlo.' 'And not just the learning – isn't this so? You imply that anything in the mind of another could be imprinted in my mind?' 'Almost anything.' 'What about dreams? Could dreams be imprinted?' 'Certainly.' 'And nightmares?' Drisana squeezed his hand and reassured him. 'No one would imprint a nightmare into another.' 'But it is possible, yes?' Drisana nodded her head. 'And the emotions ... the fears or loneliness or rage?' 'Those things, too. Some imprimaturs – certainly they're the dregs of the City – some do such things.' Danlo let his breath out slowly. 'Then how can I know what is real and what is unreal? Is it possible to imprint false memories? Things or events that never happened? Insanity? Could I remember ice as hot or see red as blue? If someone else looked at the world through shaida eyes, would I be infected with this way of seeing things?' Drisana wrung her hands together, sighed, and looked helplessly at Old Father. 'Oh ho, the boy is difficult, and his questions cut like a sarsara!' Old Father stood up and painfully limped over to Danlo. Both his eyes were open, and he spoke clearly. 'All ideas are infectious, Danlo. Most things learned early in life, we do not choose to learn. Ah, and much that comes later. So, it's so: the two wisdoms. The first wisdom: as best we can, we must choose what to put into our brains. And the second wisdom: the healthy brain creates its own ecology; the vital thoughts and ideas eventually drive out the stupid, the malignant and the parasitical.

Knowledgeable observers report that dating has nearly disappeared from college campuses and among young adults generally. It has been replaced by something called “hanging out.” You young people apparently know what this is, but I will describe it for the benefit of those of us who are middle-aged or older and otherwise uninformed. Hanging out consists of numbers of young men and young women joining together in some group activity. It is very different from dating. For the benefit of some of you who are not middle-aged or older, I also may need to describe what dating is. Unlike hanging out, dating is not a team sport. Dating is pairing off to experience the kind of one-on-one association and temporary commitment that can lead to marriage in some rare and treasured cases. . . . All of this made dating more difficult. And the more elaborate and expensive the date, the fewer the dates. As dates become fewer and more elaborate, this seems to create an expectation that a date implies seriousness or continuing commitment. That expectation discourages dating even more. . . . Simple and more frequent dates allow both men and women to “shop around” in a way that allows extensive evaluation of the prospects. The old-fashioned date was a wonderful way to get acquainted with a member of the opposite sex. It encouraged conversation. It allowed you to see how you treat others and how you are treated in a one-on-one situation. It gave opportunities to learn how to initiate and sustain a mature relationship. None of that happens in hanging out. My single brothers and sisters, follow the simple dating pattern and you don’t need to do your looking through Internet chat rooms or dating services—two alternatives that can be very dangerous or at least unnecessary or ineffective. . . . Men, if you have returned from your mission and you are still following the boy-girl patterns you were counseled to follow when you were 15, it is time for you to grow up. Gather your courage and look for someone to pair off with. Start with a variety of dates with a variety of young women, and when that phase yields a good prospect, proceed to courtship. It’s marriage time. That is what the Lord intends for His young adult sons and daughters. Men have the initiative, and you men should get on with it. If you don’t know what a date is, perhaps this definition will help. I heard it from my 18-year-old granddaughter. A “date” must pass the test of three p’s: (1) planned ahead, (2) paid for, and (3) paired off. Young women, resist too much hanging out, and encourage dates that are simple, inexpensive, and frequent. Don’t make it easy for young men to hang out in a setting where you women provide the food. Don’t subsidize freeloaders. An occasional group activity is OK, but when you see men who make hanging out their primary interaction with the opposite sex, I think you should lock the pantry and bolt the front door. If you do this, you should also hang up a sign, “Will open for individual dates,” or something like that. And, young women, please make it easier for these shy males to ask for a simple, inexpensive date. Part of making it easier is to avoid implying that a date is something very serious. If we are to persuade young men to ask for dates more frequently, we must establish a mutual expectation that to go on a date is not to imply a continuing commitment. Finally, young women, if you turn down a date, be kind. Otherwise you may crush a nervous and shy questioner and destroy him as a potential dater, and that could hurt some other sister. My single young friends, we counsel you to channel your associations with the opposite sex into dating patterns that have the potential to mature into marriage, not hanging-out patterns that only have the prospect to mature into team sports like touch football. Marriage is not a group activity—at least, not until the children come along in goodly numbers.

Everything in Nature ran according to its own nature; the running of grass was in its growing, the running of rivers their flowing, granite bubbled up, cooled, compressed and crumbled, birds lived, flew, sang and died, everything did what it needed to do, each simultaneously running its own race, each by living according to its own nature together, never leaving any other part of the universe behind. The world’s Holy things raced constantly together, not to win anything over the next, but to keep the entire surging diverse motion of the living world from grinding to a halt, which is why there is no end to that race; no finish line. That would be oblivion to all. For the Indigenous Souls of all people who can still remember how to be real cultures, life is a race to be elegantly run, not a race to be competitively won. It cannot be won; it is the gift of the world’s diverse beautiful motion that must be maintained. Because human life has been give the gift of our elegant motion, whether we limp, roll, crawl, stroll, or fly, it is an obligation to engender that elegance of motion in our daily lives in service of maintaining life by moving and living as beautifully as we can. All else has, to me, the familiar taste of that domineering warlike harshness that daily tries to cover its tracks in order to camouflage the deep ruts of some old, sick, grinding, ungainly need to flee away from the elegance of our original Indigenous human souls. Our attempt to avariciously conquer or win a place where there are no problems, whether it be Heaven or a “New Democracy,” never mind if it is spiritually ugly and immorally “won” and taken from someone who is already there, has made a citifying world of people who, unconscious of it, have become our own ogreish problem to ourselves, our future, and the world. This is a problem that we cannot continue to attempt to competitively outrun by more and more effectively designed technological approaches to speed away from the past, for the specter of our own earth-wasting reality runs grinning competitively right alongside us. By developing even more effective and entertaining methods of escape that only burn up the earth, the air, animals, plants, and the deeper substance of what it should mean to be human, by competing to get ahead, we have created a brakeless competition that has outrun our innate beauty and marked out a very definite and imminent “finish” line. Living in and on a sphere, we cannot really outrun ourselves anyway. Therefore, I say, the entire devastating and hideous state of the world and its constant wounding and wrecking of the wild, beautiful, natural, viable and small, only to keep alive an untenable cultural proceedance is truly a spiritual sickness, one that will not be cured by the efficient use of the same thinking that maintains the sickness. Nor can this overly expensive, highly funded illness be symptomatically kept at bay any longer by yet more political, environmental, or social programs. We must as individuals and communities take the time necessary to learn how to indigenously remember what a sane, original existence for a viable people might look like. Though there are marvellous things and amazing people doing them, both seen and unseen, these do not resemble in any way the general trend of what is going on now. To begin remembering our Indigenous belonging on the Earth back to life we must metabolize as individuals the grief of recognition of our lost directions, digest it into a valuable spiritual compost that allows us to learn to stay put without outrunning our strange past, and get small, unarmed, brave, and beautiful. By trying to feed the Holy in Nature the fruit of beauty from the tree of memory of our Indigenous Souls, grown in the composted failures of our past need to conquer, watered by the tears of cultural grief, we might become ancestors worth descending from and possibly grow a place of hope for a time beyond our own.

In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands. But even gossip has its limits. Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings. Even today, a critical threshold in human organisations falls somewhere around this magic number. Below this threshold, communities, businesses, social networks and military units can maintain themselves based mainly on intimate acquaintance and rumour-mongering. There is no need for formal ranks, titles and law books to keep order. 3A platoon of thirty soldiers or even a company of a hundred soldiers can function well on the basis of intimate relations, with a minimum of formal discipline. A well-respected sergeant can become ‘king of the company’ and exercise authority even over commissioned officers. A small family business can survive and flourish without a board of directors, a CEO or an accounting department. But once the threshold of 150 individuals is crossed, things can no longer work that way. You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon. Successful family businesses usually face a crisis when they grow larger and hire more personnel. If they cannot reinvent themselves, they go bust. How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in fees.

Many kinds of animal behavior can be explained by genetic similarity theory. Animals have a preference for close kin, and study after study has shown that they have a remarkable ability to tell kin from strangers. Frogs lay eggs in bunches, but they can be separated and left to hatch individually. When tadpoles are then put into a tank, brothers and sisters somehow recognize each other and cluster together rather than mix with tadpoles from different mothers. Female Belding’s ground squirrels may mate with more than one male before they give birth, so a litter can be a mix of full siblings and half siblings. Like tadpoles, they can tell each other apart. Full siblings cooperate more with each other than with half-siblings, fight less, and are less likely to run each other out of the territory when they grow up. Even bees know who their relatives are. In one experiment, bees were bred for 14 different degrees of relatedness—sisters, cousins, second cousins, etc.—to bees in a particular hive. When the bees were then released near the hive, guard bees had to decide which ones to let in. They distinguished between degrees of kinship with almost perfect accuracy, letting in the closest relatives and chasing away more distant kin. The correlation between relatedness and likelihood of being admitted was a remarkable 0.93. Ants are famous for cooperation and willingness to sacrifice for the colony. This is due to a quirk in ant reproduction that means worker ants are 70 percent genetically identical to each other. But even among ants, there can be greater or less genetic diversity, and the most closely related groups of ants appear to cooperate best. Linepithema humile is a tiny ant that originated in Argentina but migrated to the United States. Many ants died during the trip, and the species lost much of its genetic diversity. This made the northern branch of Linepithema humile more cooperative than the one left in Argentina, where different colonies quarrel and compete with each other. This new level of cooperation has helped the invaders link nests into supercolonies and overwhelm local species of ants. American entomologists want to protect American ants by introducing genetic diversity so as to make the newcomers more quarrelsome. Even plants cooperate with close kin and compete with strangers. Normally, when two plants are put in the same pot, they grow bigger root systems, trying to crowd each other out and get the most nutrients. A wild flower called the Sea Rocket, which grows on beaches, does not do that if the two plants come from the same “mother” plant. They recognize each others’ root secretions and avoid wasteful competition.

Oh, magic hour when a child first knows it can read printed words! For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word. But one day, she looked at a page and the word “mouse” had instantaneous meaning. She looked at the word and the picture of the gray mouse scampered through her mind. She looked further and when she saw “horse”, she heard him pawing at the ground and saw the sun glint on his glossy coat. The word “running” hit her suddenly and she breathed hard as though running herself. The barrier between the individual sound of each letter and the whole meaning of the word was removed sound of each letter and the printed word meant a thing at one quick glance. She read a few pages rapidly and almost became ill with excitement. She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read! From that time on, the world was hers for the reading, She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was a poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel the closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.

You will see that the most powerful and highly placed men let drop remarks in which they long for leisure, acclaim it, and prefer it to all their blessings. They desire at times, if it could be with safety, to descend from their high pinnacle; for, though nothing from without should assail or shatter, Fortune of its very self comes crashing down.8 The deified Augustus, to whom the gods vouchsafed more than to any other man, did not cease to pray for rest and to seek release from public affairs; all his conversation ever reverted to this subject—his hope of leisure. This was the sweet, even if vain, consolation with which he would gladden his labours—that he would one day live for himself. In a letter addressed to the senate, in which he had promised that his rest would not be devoid of dignity nor inconsistent with his former glory, I find these words: "But these matters can be shown better by deeds than by promises. Nevertheless, since the joyful reality is still far distant, my desire for that time most earnestly prayed for has led me to forestall some of its delight by the pleasure of words." So desirable a thing did leisure seem that he anticipated it in thought because he could not attain it in reality. He who saw everything depending upon himself alone, who determined the fortune of individuals and of nations, thought most happily of that future day on which he should lay aside his greatness. He had discovered how much sweat those blessings that shone throughout all lands drew forth, how many secret worries they concealed. Forced to pit arms first against his countrymen, then against his colleagues, and lastly against his relatives, he shed blood on land and sea. Through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and almost all countries he followed the path of battle, and when his troops were weary of shedding Roman blood, he turned them to foreign wars. While he was pacifying the Alpine regions, and subduing the enemies planted in the midst of a peaceful empire, while he was extending its bounds even beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates and the Danube, in Rome itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others were being whetted to slay him. Not yet had he escaped their plots, when his daughter9 and all the noble youths who were bound to her by adultery as by a sacred oath, oft alarmed his failing years—and there was Paulus, and a second time the need to fear a woman in league with an Antony.10 When be had cut away these ulcers11 together with the limbs themselves, others would grow in their place; just as in a body that was overburdened with blood, there was always a rupture somewhere. And so he longed for leisure, in the hope and thought of which he found relief for his labours. This was the prayer of one who was able to answer the prayers of mankind.

Thousands upon thousands of millions of minute and diverse individuals had come together and the product of their mutual dependence, their mutual hostility had been a human life. Their total colony, their living hive had been a man. The hive was dead. But in the lingering warmth many of the component individuals still faintly lived; soon they also would have perished. And meanwhile, from the air, the invisible hosts of saprophytics had already begun their unresisted invasion. They would live among the dead cells, they would grow, and prodigiously multiply and in their growing and procreation all the chemical building of the body would be undone, all the intricacies and complications of its matter would be resolved, till by the time their work was finished a few pounds of carbon, a few quarts of water, some lime, a little phosphorus and sulphur, a pinch of iron and silicon, a handful of mixed salts--all scattered and recombined with the surrounding world--would be all that remained of Everard Webley's ambition to rule and his love for Elinor, of his thoughts about politics and his recollections of childhood, of his fencing and good horsemanship, of that soft strong voice and that suddenly illuminating smile, of his admiration for Mantegna, his dislike of whiskey, his deliberately terrifying rages, his habit of stroking his chin, his belief in God, his incapacity to whistle a tune correctly, his unshakeable determinations and his knowledge of Russian.

We have been thinking and doing a post jobs-system economy in Detroit for more than two decades. In fall 2011, several hundred people from Detroit and around the nation came together to share the lessons we have derived from our struggles to distinguish “work” from “jobs.” I noted that people moved from the farm to the city to take “jobs.” They went from making clothes and growing food to buying clothes and buying food. Humans changed from producers to consumers, and their models and ideals of work became factory oriented. Olga Bonfiglio, a professor at Kalamazoo College, wrote a thoughtful response to my presentation and the many others comprising our Reimagining Work conference. “Basically, work is about one’s calling in life and contributions to the community while jobs are more about the specific tasks people perform for an organization,” she remarked. “ ‘Jobs’ have a dehumanizing effect as people fill interchangeable slots in a big machine. In today’s global economy workers can be easily replaced with those willing to work for lower wages. So, transformation to any new system of ‘work’ must begin with one’s own personal discernment about identity and purpose in this life.” We know we have not been alone in Detroit. All over the planet more and more people are thinking beyond making a living to making a life—a life that respects Earth and one another. Just as we need to reinvent democracy, now is the time for us to reimagine work and reimagine life. The new paradigm we must establish is about creating systems that bring out the best in each of us, instead of trying to harness the greed and selfishness of which we are capable. It is about a new balance of individual, family, community, work, and play that makes us better humans.

The knowledge of death came to me that night, from the dying that engulfs the world. I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, like a smooth wave on the sea-beach. He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of death drives him towards singleness. He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy, since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death. He overcomes death through overcoming common life. He does not live his individual being, since he is not what he is, but what he becomes. One who becomes grows aware of life, whereas one who simply exists never will, since he is in the midst of life. He needs the heights and singleness to become aware of life. But in life he becomes aware of death. And it is good that you become aware of collective death, since then you know why your singleness and your heights are good. Your heights are like the moon that luminously wanders alone and through the night looks eternally clear. Sometimes it covers itself and then your are totally in the darkness of the earth, but time and again it fills itself out with light. The death of the earth is foreign to it. Motionless and clear, it sees the life of the earth from afar, without enveloping haze and streaming oceans. Its unchanging form has been solid from eternity. It is the solitary clear light of the night, the individual being, and the near fragment of eternity. From there you look out, cold, motionless, and radiating. With otherworldly silvery light and green twilights, you pour out into the distant horror. You see it but your gaze is clear and cold. Your hands are red from living blood, but the moonlight of your gaze is motionless. It is the life blood of your brother, yes, it is your own blood, but your gaze remains luminous and embraces the entire horror and the earth’s round. Your gaze rests on silvery seas, on snowy peaks, on blue valleys, and you do not hear the groaning and howling of the human animal. The moon is dead. Your soul went to the moon, to the preserver of souls. Thus the soul moved toward death. I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and to live within. For that reason I turned away and sought the place of the inner life.

These same experiences are occurring to people all over the planet. After we grasp the first nine Insights, each of us is left at the same place—trying to live this reality day-to-day, in the face of what seems to be a growing pessimism and divisiveness all around us. But at the same time, we are continuing to gain a greater perspective and clarity about our spiritual situation, about who we really are. We know we are awakening to a much larger plan for planet Earth. “The Tenth is about maintaining our optimism and staying awake. We’re learning to better identify and believe in our own intuitions, knowing that these mental images are fleeting recollections of our original intention, of how we wanted our lives to evolve. We wanted to follow a certain path in life, so that we could finally remember the truth that our life experiences are preparing us to tell, and bring this knowledge into the world. “We are now seeing our lives from the higher perspective of the Afterlife. We know that our individual adventures are occurring within the context of the long history of human awakening. With this memory, our lives are grounded, put into context; we can see the long process through which we have been spiritualizing the physical dimension, and what we have left to do.” Wil paused momentarily and moved closer to us. “Now we will see if enough groups like this one come together and remember, if enough people around the world grasp the Tenth. As we have seen, it is now our responsibility to keep the intention, to ensure the future. “The polarization of Fear is still rising, and if we are to resolve it and move on, each of us must participate personally. We must watch our thoughts and expectations very carefully, and catch ourselves every time we treat another human being as an enemy. We can defend ourselves, and restrain certain people, but if we dehumanize them, we add to the Fear. “We all are souls in growth; we all have an original intention that is positive; and we can all remember. Our responsibility is to hold that idea for everyone we meet. That’s the true Interpersonal Ethic; that’s how we uplift, that’s the contagion of the new awareness that is encircling the planet. We either fear that human culture is falling apart, or we can hold the Vision that we are awakening. Either way, our expectation is a prayer that goes out as a force that tends to bring about the end we envision. Each of us must consciously choose between these two futures.

Given that at all times, so long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of human beings (racial groups, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many followers in relation to the small number of those issuing orders―and taking into consideration also that so far nothing has been better and longer practised and cultivated among human beings than obedience, we can reasonably assume that typically now the need for obedience is inborn in each individual, as a sort of formal conscience which states "You are to do something or other without conditions, and leave aside something else without conditions," in short, "Thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes on something, without being very particular, like a coarse appetite, and accepts what someone or other issuing commands―parents, teachers, laws, class biases, public opinion―shouts in people's ears. The curiously limitation of human development―the way it hesitates, takes so long, often regresses, and turns around on itself―is based on the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is passed on best and at the expense of the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct at some point striding right to its ultimate excess, then there would finally be a total lack of commanders and independent people, or they would suffer inside from a bad conscience and find it necessary first to prepare a deception for themselves in order to be able to command, as if they, too, were only obeying orders. This condition is what, in fact, exists nowadays in Europe: I call it the moral hypocrisy of those in command. They don't know how to protect themselves from their bad conscience except by behaving as if they were carrying out older or higher orders (from ancestors, the constitution, rights, law, or even God), or they even borrow herd maxims from the herd way of thinking, for example, as "the first servant of their people" or as "tools of the common good." On the other hand, the herd man in Europe today makes himself appear as if he is the single kind of human being allowed, and he glorifies those characteristics of his thanks to which he is tame, good natured, and useful to the herd, as the really human virtues, that is, public spiritedness, wishing everyone well, consideration, diligence, moderation, modesty, forbearance, and pity. For those cases, however, where people believe they cannot do without a leader and bell wether, they make attempt after attempt to replace the commander by adding together collections of clever herd people All the representative constitutional assemblies, for example, have this origin. But for all that, what a blissful relief, what a release from a pressure which is growing unbearable is the appearance of an absolute commander for these European herd animals. The effect which the appearance of Napoleon made was the most recent major evidence for that:―the history of the effect of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness which this entire century derived from its most valuable men and moments.

Given that at all times, so long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of human beings (racial groups, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many followers in relation to the small number of those issuing orders - and taking into consideration also that so far nothing has been better and longer practised and cultivated among human beings than obedience, we can reasonably assume that typically now the need for obedience is inborn in each individual, as a sort of formal conscience which states "You are to do something or other without conditions, and leave aside something else without conditions," in short, "Thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes on something, without being very particular, like a coarse appetite, and accepts what someone or other issuing commands - parents, teachers, laws, class biases, public opinion - shouts in people's ears. The curiously limitation of human development - the way it hesitates, takes so long, often regresses, and turns around on itself - is based on the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is passed on best and at the expense of the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct at some point striding right to its ultimate excess, then there would finally be a total lack of commanders and independent people, or they would suffer inside from a bad conscience and find it necessary first to prepare a deception for themselves in order to be able to command, as if they, too, were only obeying orders. This condition is what, in fact, exists nowadays in Europe: I call it the moral hypocrisy of those in command. They don't know how to protect themselves from their bad conscience except by behaving as if they were carrying out older or higher orders (from ancestors, the constitution, rights, law, or even God), or they even borrow herd maxims from the herd way of thinking, for example, as "the first servant of their people" or as "tools of the common good." On the other hand, the herd man in Europe today makes himself appear as if he is the single kind of human being allowed, and he glorifies those characteristics of his thanks to which he is tame, good natured, and useful to the herd, as the really human virtues, that is, public spiritedness, wishing everyone well, consideration, diligence, moderation, modesty, forbearance, and pity. For those cases, however, where people believe they cannot do without a leader and bell wether, they make attempt after attempt to replace the commander by adding together collections of clever herd people All the representative constitutional assemblies, for example, have this origin. But for all that, what a blissful relief, what a release from a pressure which is growing unbearable is the appearance of an absolute commander for these European herd animals. The effect which the appearance of Napoleon made was the most recent major evidence for that: - the history of the effect of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness which this entire century derived from its most valuable men and moments.

YOU FIRST When entering into relationships, we have a tendency to bend. We bend closer to one another, because regardless of what type of relationship it might be — romantic, business, friendship — there’s a reason you’re bringing that other person into your life, and that means the load is easier to carry if you carry it together, both bending toward the center. I picture people in relationships as two trees, leaning toward one another. Over time, as the relationship solidifies, you both become more comfortable bending, and as such bend farther, eventually resting trunk to trunk. You support each other and are stronger because of the shared strength of your root system and entwined branches. Double-tree power! But there’s a flaw in this mode of operation. Once you’ve spent some time leaning on someone else, if they disappear — because of a breakup, a business upset, a death, a move, an argument — you’re all that’s left, and far weaker than when you started. You’re a tree leaning sideways; the second foundation that once supported you is…gone. This is a big part of why the ending of particularly strong relationships can be so disruptive. When your support system presupposes two trunks — two people bearing the load, and divvying up the responsibilities; coping with the strong winds and hailstorms of life — it can be shocking and uncomfortable and incredibly difficult to function as an individual again; to be just a solitary tree, alone in the world, dealing with it all on your own. A lone tree needn’t be lonely, though. It’s most ideal, in fact, to grow tall and strong, straight up, with many branches. The strength of your trunk — your character, your professional life, your health, your sense of self — will help you cope with anything the world can throw at you, while your branches — your myriad interests, relationships, and experiences — will allow you to reach out to other trees who are likewise growing up toward the sky, rather than leaning and becoming co-dependent. Relationships of this sort, between two equally strong, independent people, tend to outlast even the most intertwined co-dependencies. Why? Because neither person worries that their world will collapse if the other disappears. It’s a relationship based on the connections between two people, not co-dependence. Being a strong individual first alleviates a great deal of jealousy, suspicion, and our innate desire to capture or cage someone else for our own benefit. Rather than worrying that our lives will end if that other person disappears, we know that they’re in our lives because they want to be; their lives won’t end if we’re not there, either. Two trees growing tall and strong, their branches intertwined, is a far sturdier image than two trees bent and twisted, tying themselves into uncomfortable knots to wrap around one another, desperately trying to prevent the other from leaving. You can choose which type of tree to be, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with either model; we all have different wants, needs, and priorities. But if you’re aiming for sturdier, more resilient relationships, it’s a safe bet that you’ll have better options and less drama if you focus on yourself and your own growth, first. Then reach out and connect with others who are doing the same.

This brings me to an objection to integrated information theory by the quantum physicist Scott Aaronson. His argument has given rise to an instructive online debate that accentuates the counterintuitive nature of some IIT's predictions. Aaronson estimates phi.max for networks called expander graphs, characterized by being both sparsely yet widely connected. Their integrated information will grow indefinitely as the number of elements in these reticulated lattices increases. This is true even of a regular grid of XOR logic gates. IIT predicts that such a structure will have high phi.max. This implies that two-dimensional arrays of logic gates, easy enough to build using silicon circuit technology, have intrinsic causal powers and will feel like something. This is baffling and defies commonsense intuition. Aaronson therefor concludes that any theory with such a bizarre conclusion must be wrong. Tononi counters with a three-pronged argument that doubles down and strengthens the theory's claim. Consider a blank featureless wall. From the extrinsic perspective, it is easily described as empty. Yet the intrinsic point of view of an observer perceiving the wall seethes with an immense number of relations. It has many, many locations and neighbourhood regions surrounding these. These are positioned relative to other points and regions - to the left or right, above or below. Some regions are nearby, while others are far away. There are triangular interactions, and so on. All such relations are immediately present: they do not have to be inferred. Collectively, they constitute an opulent experience, whether it is seen space, heard space, or felt space. All share s similar phenomenology. The extrinsic poverty of empty space hides vast intrinsic wealth. This abundance must be supported by a physical mechanism that determines this phenomenology through its intrinsic causal powers. Enter the grid, such a network of million integrate-or-fire or logic units arrayed on a 1,000 by 1,000 lattice, somewhat comparable to the output of an eye. Each grid elements specifies which of its neighbours were likely ON in the immediate past and which ones will be ON in the immediate future. Collectively, that's one million first-order distinctions. But this is just the beginning, as any two nearby elements sharing inputs and outputs can specify a second-order distinction if their joint cause-effect repertoire cannot be reduced to that of the individual elements. In essence, such a second-order distinction links the probability of past and future states of the element's neighbours. By contrast, no second-order distinction is specified by elements without shared inputs and outputs, since their joint cause-effect repertoire is reducible to that of the individual elements. Potentially, there are a million times a million second-order distinctions. Similarly, subsets of three elements, as long as they share input and output, will specify third-order distinctions linking more of their neighbours together. And on and on. This quickly balloons to staggering numbers of irreducibly higher-order distinctions. The maximally irreducible cause-effect structure associated with such a grid is not so much representing space (for to whom is space presented again, for that is the meaning of re-presentation?) as creating experienced space from an intrinsic perspective.

Marriage is a risk that you take, hoping you will grow together as individuals.’ Twenty years down the line, they might find that the pace of growth of both people and the trajectory their paths have taken aren’t congruent at all. The couple may find that they are strangers living under the same roof. But that comes later. I think for every marriage to have a chance of success there has to be a certain amount of compatibility and similar interests to begin with.

Spiritual direction is a way of companioning people as they seek to look closely, through the eyes of their hearts, at the guidance and transforming work of God in their lives. It's a practice that began in the early years of Christianity when people followed the desert mothers and fathers out to the wilderness to ask them how to know God. Over the years, spiritual direction has appeared in many faith traditions. It was kept alive in the Christian faith mainly through the Roman Catholic Church, but today the Protestant church is rediscovering it. People throughout the Christian church, including those of an evangelical orientation, are experiencing again the gifts that God gives to his people through the loving listening and the gentle guidance of spiritual directors. This gift is usually offered in the context of individual spiritual direction, but the potential for spiritual direction in small groups is a growing and promising expression of the ministry of spiritual companionship.

Miracles never cease… out of all the zillions of people in the world you have chosen each other. You may have known each other for two years or ten, but your creation began long before you ever met. You each carry and have physical traits and personality that genetically began millions of years before your birth and creation... and as the ancestral tree grows exponentially and generations expand… You are now before me and the world as a combination of all your ancestors which makes you both unique individuals…. You have come to love what you so far know of each other. Look forward to loving and learning more of one another as you both take this journey into marriage and discover who you are and how far you are going into this venture together.

Want to Read Rate this book 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars Zen in the Art of WritingZen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury 11,277 ratings, 4.11 average rating, 1,140 reviews Open Preview Zen in the Art of Writing Quotes (showing 1-30 of 90) “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” ― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing tags: writing 5923 likes Like “I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.” ― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing tags: humour, individuality, science-fiction 5858 likes Like “Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.” ― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing tags: chaos, construction, creative-process, destruction, writers, writing 220 likes Like “That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.” ― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing tags: cats, creativity, ideas 195 likes Like “You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can't sleep at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.” ― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing tags: ideas, writing 191 likes Like “Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.” ― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

I want to make doubly sure you got the message of this chapter, so I’d like to summarize the critical facts about compost. You need blended compost made from at least five different ingredients. Mix several different types of compost together if you buy your compost. Most commercial composts have only one or two ingredients because they are merely leftover waste materials or byproducts from an industrial or commercial operation. By themselves, they do not make a good ingredient in Mel’s Mix. However, the good news is, if you can find at least five of these individual composted materials you can mix them together to make a well-rounded blended compost ingredient for your Mel’s Mix. And if you did your job and got a blended compost made from at least five major ingredients, you will be blessed with the most wonderful garden you could ever imagine. And no more work ever.

Without sufficient pull inwards, towards the sanctity of the couple relationship, the relationship can become lost, powerless, and vulnerable to many divisive factors including other people. Without sufficient pull outwards, into the world, we can become so selfish and inward-looking as a couple that we stop growing. The relationship can become stale and the people involved can become suffocated with their own togetherness.

Watch what they do, not what they say Watching what your customers are doing—or trying to do—with your product can light the way forward. But you have to be careful to pay attention to what they do and not just what they say. Expect to have your theories of human behavior tested Your theory about how individuals and groups behave should underlie your strategy, your product design, your incentive program—every decision you make. But be open and alert to when your customers show you a different theory or direction. That could become your product’s point of differentiation. Follow the leaders: Your customers To grow your business, you may have to give up control. Look for instances when your customers hack or hijack your product, and then go along for the ride. Get Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy working together Customer data is your Mr. Spock, detached and logical. Customer emotion is your Dr. McCoy, passionate and all too human. Think of yourself as Captain Kirk, responsible for making the two work together to get the best out of each.

Though energy fields are invisible, they shape matter. Albert Einstein said that, “The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.” Many studies show that human beings are influenced by the energy fields of others. In a series of 148 1-minute trials involving 25 people, trained volunteers going into heart coherence were able to induce coherence in test subjects at a distance. They didn’t have to touch their targets to produce the effect. Their energy fields were sufficient. When you are in a heart coherent state, your heart radiates a coherent electromagnetic signal into the environment around you. This field is detectable by a magnetometer several meters away. When other people enter that coherent energy field, their heart coherence increases too, producing a group field effect. Not only are we affected by the fields of other people; we’re affected by the energies of the planet and solar system. A remarkable series of experiments, conducted by a research team led by Rollin McCraty, director of research at the HeartMath Institute, has linked individual human energy to solar cycles. McCraty and his colleagues track solar activity using large magnetometers placed at strategic locations on the earth’s surface. Solar flares affect the electromagnetic fields of the planet. The researchers compare the ebbs and flows of solar energy with the heart coherence readings of trained volunteers. They have found that when people are in heart coherence, their electromagnetic patterns track those of the solar system. 8.15. The heart coherence rhythms of a volunteer compared to solar activity over the course of a month. A later study of 16 participants over 5 months found a similar effect. McCraty writes: “A growing body of evidence suggests that an energetic field is formed among individuals in groups through which communication among all the group members occurs simultaneously. In other words, there is an actual ‘group field’ that connects all the members” together. The results of this research confirm a hypothesis McCraty and I discussed at a conference when I was writing Mind to Matter: Not only are these heart-coherent people in sync with large-scale global cycles, they’re also in sync with each other. McCraty continues, “We’re all like little cells in the bigger Earth brain—sharing information at a subtle, unseen level that exists between all living systems, not just humans, but animals, trees, and so on.” When we use selective attention to tune ourselves to positive coherent energy, we participate in the group energy field of other human beings doing the same. We may also resonate in phase with coherent planetary and universal fields. 8.16. The brain functions as receiver of information from the field. The Brain’s Ability to Detect Fields The idea of invisible energy fields has always been difficult for many scientists to swallow. Around 1900, when Dutch physician Willem Einthoven proposed that the human heart had an energy field, he was ridiculed. He built progressively more sensitive galvanometers to detect it, and he was eventually successful.

The heart is small, but it has the capacity to love infinite. Man is born with the potential to become an ocean of love. But few people attain to this innate potential. The society, the culture, the civilization, the politicians, the organized church, the priests and the vested interests are all against the individual. They sacrifice the individual for the sake of the collective, the unconscious masses.   The collective does not need love, on the contrary the collective needs hate. The Christians have to hate the Mohammedans, because the collective can only remain together in hate. One country has to hate another country, otherwise it will fall apart.In times of war countries become united against a common enemy. When they do not have a common enemy they start fighting amongst themselves.  The individual can grow only through love and the collective needs hate, so there is a conflict between the interests of the individual and the interests of the collective  crowd, the collective mob.  The individual has to be very aware not to be exploited by the unconscious crowd. Unless the individual is aware, you can lose the opportunity to grow, to become mature and to attain your innate potential in life. 

FIELD EFFECTS Emotional contagion is just one explanation for the growth of meditation. Another is field effects. Everything begins as energy, then works its way into matter. Though energy fields are invisible, they shape matter. Albert Einstein said that, “The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.” Many studies show that human beings are influenced by the energy fields of others. In a series of 148 1-minute trials involving 25 people, trained volunteers going into heart coherence were able to induce coherence in test subjects at a distance. They didn’t have to touch their targets to produce the effect. Their energy fields were sufficient. When you are in a heart coherent state, your heart radiates a coherent electromagnetic signal into the environment around you. This field is detectable by a magnetometer several meters away. When other people enter that coherent energy field, their heart coherence increases too, producing a group field effect. Not only are we affected by the fields of other people; we’re affected by the energies of the planet and solar system. A remarkable series of experiments, conducted by a research team led by Rollin McCraty, director of research at the HeartMath Institute, has linked individual human energy to solar cycles. McCraty and his colleagues track solar activity using large magnetometers placed at strategic locations on the earth’s surface. Solar flares affect the electromagnetic fields of the planet. The researchers compare the ebbs and flows of solar energy with the heart coherence readings of trained volunteers. They have found that when people are in heart coherence, their electromagnetic patterns track those of the solar system. 8.15. The heart coherence rhythms of a volunteer compared to solar activity over the course of a month. A later study of 16 participants over 5 months found a similar effect. McCraty writes: “A growing body of evidence suggests that an energetic field is formed among individuals in groups through which communication among all the group members occurs simultaneously. In other words, there is an actual ‘group field’ that connects all the members” together. The results of this research confirm a hypothesis McCraty and I discussed at a conference when I was writing Mind to Matter: Not only are these heart-coherent people in sync with large-scale global cycles, they’re also in sync with each other. McCraty continues, “We’re all like little cells in the bigger Earth brain—sharing information at a subtle, unseen level that exists between all living systems, not just humans, but animals, trees, and so on.” When we use selective attention to tune ourselves to positive coherent energy, we participate in the group energy field of other human beings doing the same. We may also resonate in phase with coherent planetary and universal fields. 8.16. The brain functions as receiver of information from the field. The Brain’s Ability to Detect Fields The idea of invisible energy fields has always been difficult for many scientists to swallow. Around 1900, when Dutch physician Willem Einthoven proposed that the human heart had an energy field, he was ridiculed. He built progressively more sensitive galvanometers to detect it, and he was eventually successful.

Though each individual mortal experiences life for but a score of years, they can draw upon a store of stories left by all their forbearers. The race of humankind grows towards infinity, even as the nature of each individual is limited. Nature may describe tendencies and circumscribe potentialities, but it is within the power of each soul to nurture itself for another life, to imagine a course not taken, to strive for a different view. Through that yearning by the finite for the infinite, the portraits painted by all the mortal eyes may yet piece together a grander truth than our divine understanding

When dusk fell, my family, along with what appeared to be all the citizens of Hytanica, gathered at the military training field, where the Captain of the Guard’s body had been placed on a litter above a stack of firewood, ready to be burned, his soul already committed to God by our priests. Soldiers had stood guard around the site all day, and people had been coming in a steady stream to pay their respects. Many of them had left tokens of esteem at the base of the pyre--weapons of various types, coins, embroidered handkerchiefs, trophies won in battle or at tournaments, military medals and insignia. Even small children came forward, laying flowers, notes, toys and other items that had some special meaning to them among the other gifts. It made me both sad and proud when Celdrid walked forward and added his sword to the growing mound of mementos, the one that had originally been given to Steldor by our father, to be passed on by Steldor to my brother. It was perhaps Celdrid’s most coveted possession. He looked to Steldor as he came back to stand by us, and our cousin gave him a salute. When all the individuals who wanted to do so had paid homage to the captain, everyone stood in silence, the stillness of the large crowd itself a potent tribute. Grief could be a powerful, uniting force. Off to the side, separated from the masses, stood Steldor and Galen, their faces stoic, both wearing their military uniforms and holding lighted torches in preparation for setting the wood ablaze. King Adrik finally broke the silence, stepping forward as the appropriate representative of the royal family to say a few words. Queen Alera had not yet returned from Cokyri, another source of worry for the subdued throng. The former King cleared his throat and then began to speak, his deep voice easily carrying across the field. “We come together to honor a man of duty and devotion, strength and compassion, courage and wisdom. A man who put kingdom and family before all else, but who included within his family every citizen in need. A man of unwavering allegiance who steadfastly served his King and Queen for over thirty years. A man whose legacy will live on in his son and in every life he touched. A man I was proud to name my Captain of the Guard and to call my friend. And who, while serving the kingdom he loved, made the ultimate sacrifice. Let us celebrate his life this night, and may his funeral pyre burn as a bright beacon of hope in the darkness, letting the entire Recorah River Valley know that Hytanica is free once more.” Cheers went up from the crowd, then Steldor and Galen stepped forward and touched their torches to the pitch-soaked firewood. With a roar, flames shot into the air, befitting the man who had lived with an equally fiery passion.

Paul concludes, "And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony" (v. 14). A romantic relationship begins with attraction and then grows through affection for each other. But a relationship matures toward true and godly love as it ripens into a desire to give, a longing to bless, and a willingness to sacrifice and to serve. The Bible gives the highest expression of love in terms of God's gift of his only Son, Jesus Christ: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son" (John 3:16). This is the love with which we are to bind our thoughts and words, our feelings and interactions. The result, when two people love with the love that comes from God, is that most wonderful realization of unity, in which two people give all of their individuality into what Paul calls a "perfect harmony.

But speaking about sex with your partner is not what it is all about. You must make the conscious decision to want to grow together with your partner. This mutual endeavor, via the connection you have through the relationship you share makes the difference between a relationship that may ultimately fail, or lose its fervor, and a relationship that not only has a chance at long-term survival, but also one that – because of the energetic connection inherent in sex – does not eventually flounder and die a slow death of sexual strangulation. The essence of conscious growth in a relationship depends on the couple’s desire to grow together psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually, as well as sexually. This implies conscious awareness of the self, conscious awareness of all of one’s feelings, thoughts, actions, and reactions, and acceptance of the fact that each of us is responsible for all of these facets of ourselves. Such a conscious link between partners keeps sex alive in ways that go far beyond sex toys and fantasy games because it speaks to the real – and eternal – connection between the two individuals.

The purpose of consciousness—any consciousness—was to achieve infinite comprehension. It was as simple as that. If a God existed, humanity must strive to discover this God and help this deity become omniscient, not just in one infinity, but in an infinity of infinities. This was one possible purpose for her species. But her alter ego, using symbolic logic, had arrived at a possibility she considered much more likely: that humanity’s purpose, together with all life across all universes, was not to discover God—it was to become God. If a single human egg could possess consciousness at the instant of fertilization, how would it view itself? It couldn’t possibly predict or comprehend the multi-trillion-celled being it would ultimately become. The entirety of humanity could well be that single, fertilized cell, unaware that it would grow a trillion-fold more complex and eventually become God, perhaps had already become God, in a universe in which all pasts, presents, and futures existed side by side. Humanity was composed of separate individuals now, but an embryo at early stages was also nothing more than a ball of separate cells. But these separate cells would ultimately become connected in wondrous ways to create something unimaginably greater than themselves. And seen in this light, altruism and sociopathy were far from straightforward concepts, beyond even the complexities that Abraham Lincoln had revealed. Absolute altruism on one level could be absolute selfishness in disguise on another, and vice-versa. The cells making up the human body were selfless; gladly sacrificing themselves when necessary for the good of the organism. On the microscopic level they were being foolishly altruistic, foolishly suicidal, but on the macroscopic level they were being purely selfish—ensuring the survival of the body. And what happened when an individual cell became selfish and exhibited Nietzsche’s will to power? It became a cancer. The cell would break free of the restraints on its own division and become immortal—for a while—until its very immortality choked the entire organism to death, killing the selfish cell in the process.

Marriage is a risk that you take, hoping you will grow together as individuals.

The Bible talks about the two becoming one. Of a man loving his wife as he loves himself. And of a woman submitting to her husband. People like to look at each of those things individually when, in fact, they all tie together. Some people don't like the submitting part and want to reject that, but in a truly God-honoring marriage, all of the pieces must be put in place. The best way to make sure that happens is to give God first place in your life and then make each other a priority. A relationship cannot grow and flourish when you don't make it a priority and that's true of your relationship with God and your relationship with your spouse.

I believe the most significant thing that is lost in a church that does not have corporate prayer is faith. There is simply no expectation that God will do the miraculous. One of the main reasons most churches are stagnant and do not see God at work in miraculous ways in their midst is that most churches and individuals do not know what it is to pray in faith anymore. But faith grows as we pray together.

Consider our fixation upon Jesus as personal Savior, so central to the evangelistic strategies of the previous generation. Such privatization of the Christian faith turns out to be little more than a regrettable accommodation to a pagan culture's unbiblical obsession with individual determinism and personal subjective experience. And we are now paying the price for peddling a less-than-holistic gospel. Framing conversion to Christ in solely individualistic terms has left us with little social capital to draw on in our churches as we try to encourage our people to stay in community and grow together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

grove,” but its primary meaning for more than 1,000 years has remained the same. It is a small grouping of trees that bind themselves together over time, both above ground and below it. The trees’ branches become intertwined with one another, providing stability to the grove in severe storms. The trees’ roots also grow together, strengthening the stature of every individual trunk.

There are five kinds of freedom, and they form a hierarchy a little like Maslow's pyramid. There is political freedom, the freedom that underlies all of our actions – the freedom to write whatever we want, say whatever we want, and believe whatever we want. There is social freedom, the freedom to live our daily lives and have relationships with whoever we choose, without being abused or harassed. There is financial freedom, the idea of which I've already discussed quite a lot in this chapter.   And then there are the two most advanced forms of freedom. Freedom of the mind is the freedom to give up the ego and its fear, its controlling manner, and its insecurities, and to let your mind develop to its fullest potential. The final level of freedom is what we can call the Tao. In this level of freedom we understand that the whole universe is interconnected, and that we are not isolated individuals. Instead, we're all connected, all together, all one – and in this coming together is the freedom of love and the freedom of seeing what our true path is and how we can grow as people. I accept that this is a rather complicated notion, but it's also a vital one.

Though each individual mortal experiences life for but a score of years, they can draw upon a store of stories left by all their forbearers. The race of humankind grows towards infinity, even as the nature of each individual is limited. Nature may describe tendencies and circumscribe potentialities, but it is within the power of each soul to nurture itself for another life, to image a course not taken, to strive for a different view. Through that yearning by the finite for the infinite, the portraits painted by all the mortal eyes may yet piece together a grander truth than our divine understanding.

Well, when we’re looking at political processes and we think about classically political left, kind of perspectives that have more to do with the orientation of the collective and the whole and political right that have more to do with the individual and sovereignty. On the right, do we want people who are more self-responsible, who are more sovereign, and who are more empowered? And do we want to give more power to people who are doing a better job? All of that makes perfect sense. Left perspective. Do we want to create situations that actually influence the individuals in the situations to do better – social systems, education, healthcare? Does the environment affect the individual? You can really think of it as: does the environment affect the individual while understanding evolutionary theory that individuals are really formed by their environment? Of course. With humans that are niche creators do the individuals affect their environment? Of course. If you hold either of those as the only perspective, obviously, you’re just missing so much which is that the individual is affecting the whole. The whole, is in turn affecting the individuals, and how do we create systems that have virtuous cycles between empowering individuals and creating better social systems that have the effect of creating humans that are not dependent on the social systems, but that are more sovereign and can in turn create better social systems? And whether we’re thinking about a political issue like that, or we’re looking at a psychological issue like the orientation of being and enjoying reality as is and accepting ourselves and others as is, and doing and becoming which is adding to life, adding to ourselves, seeking to improve ourselves, how do we hold these together? They don’t just have to be held as a paradox or holding one or flip-flopping. There’s a way that when understanding how they related to each other – so in that example - if I understand the nature of a person as a noun that is static then it seems like accepting them the way they are unconditionally, removes the basis for growth. But if I understand that the person is a dynamic process, that they’re actually a verb, that intrinsic to what they are in the moment is desire and impulse to grow and become. And like that, loving someone unconditionally involves wanting for them their own self-actualization and there’s no dichotomy between accepting someone, ourselves, as is, or the world, and seeking to help it grow, advance, and express. So it’s a very simple process of saying the ability to take multiple perspectives, to see the partial truth in them, and then to be able to seam them together into something that isn’t a perspective. It’s a trans-perspective capacity to hold the relationship between many perspectives in a way that can inform our choice-making is fundamental to navigating reality.

It’s tempting to think that the male bias that is embedded in language is simply a relic of more regressive times, but the evidence does not point that way. The world’s ‘fastest-growing language’,34 used by more than 90% of the world’s online population, is emoji.35 This language originated in Japan in the 1980s and women are its heaviest users:36 78% of women versus 60% of men frequently use emoji.37 And yet, until 2016, the world of emojis was curiously male. The emojis we have on our smartphones are chosen by the rather grand-sounding ‘Unicode Consortium’, a Silicon Valley-based group of organisations that work together to ensure universal, international software standards. If Unicode decides a particular emoji (say ‘spy’) should be added to the current stable, they will decide on the code that should be used. Each phone manufacturer (or platform such as Twitter and Facebook) will then design their own interpretation of what a ‘spy’ looks like. But they will all use the same code, so that when users communicate between different platforms, they are broadly all saying the same thing. An emoji face with heart eyes is an emoji face with heart eyes. Unicode has not historically specified the gender for most emoji characters. The emoji that most platforms originally represented as a man running, was not called ‘man running’. It was just called ‘runner’. Similarly the original emoji for police officer was described by Unicode as ‘police officer’, not ‘policeman’. It was the individual platforms that all interpreted these gender-neutral terms as male. In 2016, Unicode decided to do something about this. Abandoning their previously ‘neutral’ gender stance, they decided to explicitly gender all emojis that depicted people.38 So instead of ‘runner’ which had been universally represented as ‘male runner’, Unicode issued code for explicitly male runner and explicitly female runner. Male and female options now exist for all professions and athletes. It’s a small victory, but a significant one.

Diversity training is any program designed to facilitate positive intergroup interaction, reduce prejudice and discrimination, and generally teach individuals who are different from others how to work together effectively. "From the broad corporate perspective, diversity training is defined as raising personal awareness about individual differences in the workplace and how those differences inhibit or enhance the way people work together and get work done. In the narrowest sense, it is education about compliance – affirmative action (AA), equal employment opportunity (EEO), and sexual harassment." A competency based definition refers to diversity training as any solution designed to increase cultural diversity awareness, attitude, knowledge, and skills. Diversity training is thought to be more needed because of the growing ethnic and racial diversity in the workplace.

I described research showing that people who grow up in Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies are statistical outliers on many psychological measures, including measures of moral psychology. I also showed that: • The WEIRDer you are, the more you perceive a world full of separate objects, rather than relationships. • Moral pluralism is true descriptively. As a simple matter of anthropological fact, the moral domain varies across cultures. • The moral domain is unusually narrow in WEIRD cultures, where it is largely limited to the ethic of autonomy (i.e., moral concerns about individuals harming, oppressing, or cheating other individuals). It is broader—including the ethics of community and divinity—in most other societies, and within religious and conservative moral matrices within WEIRD societies. • Moral matrices bind people together and blind them to the coherence, or even existence, of other matrices. This makes it very difficult for people to consider the possibility that there might really be more than one form of moral truth, or more than one valid framework for judging people or running a society. In the next three chapters I’ll catalogue the moral intuitions, showing exactly what else there is beyond harm and fairness. I’ll show how a small set of innate and universal moral foundations can be used to construct a great variety of moral matrices. I’ll offer tools you can use to understand moral arguments emanating from matrices that are not your own. SIX

A young male shingleback (skink), in spring, travels quite widely through the semi-desert, seeking a partner. He identifies a female by her chemical scent, her pheromones. He may then start to follow her, trailing behind her with his head close to her tail. The pair may stay together for six to eight weeks. If she is not physiologically ready to receive him, she will keep her body close to the ground. But eventually her mood may change and she will straighten her hind legs so that the rear of her body is lifted above the ground. He then crawls beneath her and twists his body so that their cloacas meet and he is able to insert his sperm. The two then separate and go their own ways. Unlike many lizards, the female retains her fertilised eggs within her until the young are so well developed that they are capable of independent life. This takes a long time. They grow so large that there is only room within her body for a very small number of them — usually no more than three. Then at last, after five months, she gives birth. The young waddle off into the desert and the female resumes her lonely life. But when spring returns, an adult will once again seek out the partner it had during the previous season. Such partnerships may last for as long as two decades. If one individual is killed, perhaps, as happens only too often, crushed beneath the wheels of a car, the survivor may stay beside the body gently licking it. A coldly dispassionate explanation of this is, of course, that the bereaved has formed a liking for its partner’s pheromone and is reluctant to leave its source. Other interpretations, more sentmental and anthropomorphic, might suggest that the survivor is disconsolate — if not grieving.

By empowering teams, and treating them as fundamental building blocks, individuals inside those teams move closer together to act as a team rather than just a group of people. On the other hand, by explicitly agreeing on interaction modes with other teams, expectations on behaviors become clearer and inter-team trust grows.

The fierce and growing hostility to “plutocracy” at the opening of the twentieth century reflected moral outrage about inequality that had been absent during the Gilded Age with its emphasis on social Darwinism and the rights of ownership. This normative change was temporarily disrupted by the Red Scare of the 1920s, but the utter devastation of the Great Depression gave renewed force to the ideals of social solidarity instead of naked individualism, even among Republicans like Herbert Hoover.120 The widely shared sacrifices of World War II strongly reinforced egalitarian norms among the Greatest Generation, who would then dominate American society and politics for a quarter century after the war.

The heart is small, but it has the capacity to love infinite. Man is born with the potential to become an ocean of love. But few people attain to this innate potential. The society, the culture, the civilization, the politicians, the organized church, the priests and the vested interests are all against the individual. They sacrifice the individual for the sake of the collective, the unconscious masses.    The collective does not need love, on the contrary the collective needs hate. The Christians have to hate the Mohammedans, because the collective can only remain together in hate. One country has to hate another country, otherwise it will fall apart.In times of war countries become united against a common enemy. When they donot have a common enemy they start fighting amongst themselves.  The individual can grow only through love and the collective needs hate, so thereis a conflict between the interests of the individual and the interests of the collective  crowd, the collective mob.  The individual has to be very aware not to be exploited by the unconscious crowd.Unless the individual is aware, you can lose the opportunity to grow, to become mature and to attain your innate potential in life. 

The violence in which we have been living for so long acts naturally and incessantly to turn human beings into faceless, one-dimensional creatures lacking volition. Wars, armies, regimes, and fanatic religions try to blur the nuances that create personal, private uniqueness, the nonrecurrent wonder of each and every person, and attempt to turn people into a mass, into a horde, so that they may be better “suited” to their purposes and to the entire situation. Literature—and not necessarily any particular book, but the attentiveness engendered by direct, profound, “complex literature—reminds us of our duty to demand for ourselves—from the “situation”—the right to individuality and uniqueness. It helps us to reclaim some of the things that this “situation” tries relentlessly to expropriate: the subtle, discerning application to the person trapped in the conflict, whether friend or foe; the complex nuances of relationships between people and between different communities; the precision of words and descriptions; the flexibility of thought; the ability and the courage to occasionally change the point of view in which we are frozen (sometimes fossilized); the deep and essential understanding that we can—we must—read every human situation from several different points of view. Then we may be able to reach the place in which the totally contradictory stories of different people, different nations, even sworn enemies, may coexist and play out together. This is the place where we are finally able to grasp that in true negotiations, our wishes will be forced to encounter the Other’s, forced to recognize their justness, their legitimacy. This is the moment when we feel the sharp growing pains that always attend the arrival of sobriety, and in this case the realization that there is a limit to our ability to mold reality so that it perfectly suits only our own needs. This is the moment when we feel what I called earlier “the principle of Otherness,” whose deep-seated meaning, if you wish, is the rightful existence, the stories, pains, and hopes, of the Other. If we can only reach this Archimedean point, we can begin to dismantle the barriers and detonators that prevent us from solving the conflict.

The same question applies to the problems of child-rearing. How can we successfully remove the child from his inflated state and give him a realistic and responsible notion of his relation to the world, while at the same time maintaining that living link with the archetypal psyche which is needed in order to make his personality strong and resilient? The problem is to maintain the integrity of the ego-Self axis while dissolving the ego's identification with the Self. On this question rest all the disputes of permissiveness versus discipline in child rearing. Permissiveness emphasizes acceptance and encouragement of the child's spontaneity and nourishes his contact with the source of life energy with which he is born. But it also maintains and encourages the inflation of the child, which is unrealistic to the demands of outer life. Discipline, on the other hand, emphasizes strict limits of behavior, encourages dissolution of the ego-Self identity and treats the inflation quite successfully; but at the same time it tends to damage the vital, necessary connection between the growing ego and its roots in the unconscious. There is no choice between these --they are a pair of opposites, and must operate together.

They used my name and permit to grow the weed and earn money to repay their debts and compensate their investors. To keep my girlfriend. To take her. I am uncertain if any of them have ever spent a minute in jail for any of these activities. Adam proudly showcases his new motorcycles on Instagram, posing on a hill above Barcelona. He also displays his brand new electric camper van, which they use to travel and transport drugs across Europe and Iberia, as well as his gigantic marijuana cultivation located in Portugal. People like Ruan and Martina admire his public images. I came across a picture of Ruan and Martina together in Berlin, where their mother Fernanda visited them. Martina became member of the Evil Eye Cult, and the custom made mafia group in Spain, which used her as a pawn in their porn and drug-related activities. She now operates as their representative in Berlin. Martina and I have lost the ability to genuinely smile. Her social media posts only show disinterest or a malicious demeanor. ‘A boot stomping on a human face.’ In a picture with her brother and mother, she puts on a forced fake “good vibe” and “happy” smile, revealing her flawless teeth and the subtle lines of aging. With each passing day, she bears a greater resemblance to her rich and so happy mother, the bad person. As far as I know, none of these individuals have faced consequences for their actions, such as having their teeth broken. As I had. Innocently. Taking care of business and their lives. With love. I find this to be incredibly unjust. In the 21st century. In Europe. On planet Earth. By non-EU criminals. “Matando – ganando” – “killing and gaining” like there were no Laws at all. Nowadays, you can observe Sabrina flaunting her fake lips and altered face, just like Martina her enhanced breasts. Guess who was paying for it? It seems that both girls now sustain themselves through their bodies and drug involvement, to this day, influencing criminals to gain friends in harming Tomas and having a lavish lifestyle filled with fun and mischief. Making a living. Enjoying Spain. Enjoying Life. My money. My tears. This is the situation as it stands. I was wondering what Salvador Dali was trying to tell me. I stood in front of the Lincoln portrait for a long time, but I couldn't grasp the point or the moral behind it. I can listen to Abraham Lincoln and ‘trust people. To see. If I can trust them.’ But he ultimately suffered a tragic fate, with his life being taken. (Got his head popped.) I believe there may have also been a female or two involved in that situation, too, possibly leading to his guards being let down. While he was watching: Acting performances, he was facing a: Stage. Theater. It is disheartening, considering he was a good person. Like Jesus, John Lennon and so on. Shows a pattern Machiavelli was talking about. Some individuals are too bright for those in darkness; they feel compelled to suppress those brighter minds simply because they think and act differently. Popping their heads. Reptilian lower brain-based culture, the concept of the Evil Eye, Homo erectus. He couldn't even stand up properly when I was shouting at him, urging him to stand up from the stairs. ‘Homo seditus reptilis.’ But what else was there in the Lincoln image that I didn't see? What was Dali trying to convey or express or tell me? Besides the fact that the woman is in his mind, on his mind, in the image, exactly, his head got popped open. Perhaps because he was focusing on a woman, trusting her for a split second, or turning his head away for a moment.

Sonnet 1147 Only way to grow together as a couple, is to nourish each other's individual growth. Only way to grow together as a society, is to empower each other's personal growth. Learn from Manu, Majnun, Vyas and M.A.S.H, Absorb all good like an eager sponge. Tradition of tribe has outstayed its welcome, Now outgrow the fences across fearful hunch. Na desi, na videsi, Banna hai to bano visvadesi. Bohot aye despar marnevaale, Des ke par chalo sudhare insani zindagi. Ni local, ni extranjero, Simplemente seamos humano. Más allá de la patria, más allá de la muerte, Vivamos como un planeta pueblo. Ni obediente, ni opresivo - Luchando por igualdad seremos humano.

The first recorded use of the word ‘club’ in a social sense, the very birth of the idea, was in the word ‘unclubbable’ in 1633, and would grow in use against the backdrop of the English Civil War, so that it had become quite widespread by the 1650s. To be ‘unclubbable’ was to be the kind of selfish individual who would always find some excuse to not pay their bill. From being ‘unclubbable’ evolved the notion of being ‘clubbable’, and part of a ‘club’. This was rooted in a group of tavern regulars clubbing together, to defray costs. In an ideal club, the bills were split, and the whole culture of socialising was less expensive, and more equitable, than turning up in dread of being the one person who would be lumbered with the entire bill.

Imagine,” I thought, “a world in which brothers and sisters grow up in homes where hurting isn’t allowed; where children are taught to express their anger at each other sanely and safely; where each child is valued as an individual, not in relation to the others; where cooperation, rather than competition is the norm; where no one

The next hurdle is the recognition that we have many deeply ingrained habit patterns that take time—a lot of time—to change. At first the typical neophyte is sure that he or she has a tremendous capacity and will grow more quickly than others. Then the sobering realization dawns that the degree of self-transformation is equal to the effort made. If neophytes have persisted thus far, they will almost inevitably encounter doubt (samshaya)—doubt about their own capacity; doubt about their teacher; doubt about the efficacy of the teaching. It is not far from the truth to say that practitioners who do not befriend doubt are bound to become self-deluded. If there really is no doubt or self-delusion, then they are quite simply enlightened. Another obstacle, not often identified, is the fact that practitioners’ karmic tendencies (read unconscious or semiconscious habit patterns) are magnified because awareness is enhanced through regular practice. This can be likened to a bright searchlight shining deep into the well of the mind. In the depth of the unconscious reside all kinds of unpleasant realities that get flushed out by steady application to self-inspection and self-understanding. At times, the unconscious materials that drift into the conscious mind seem overwhelming, and then it becomes clear that spiritual life is a form of brinkmanship. The Indic tradition speaks of the razor-edged path. Gradually spiritual practitioners learn to overcome their intrinsic materialism (i.e., constantly thinking in terms of the visible reality only). There is a progressive loosening of the ego knot or “self-contraction” (ātma-samkoca) by which the ordinary individual anxiously seeks to hold everything together. Spiritual practitioners learn to be humorous about everything, including themselves. Life is seen from a new perspective: as a strange play in which we are willy-nilly involved and which we can either misunderstand and suffer or understand and transcend even while being fully engaged in its drama. Practitioners must prevail over spiritual materialism—the false sense of accumulating “higher” experiences. They can realize inner freedom only to the extent that even the goal of liberation is renounced. Liberation, or enlightenment, is not a thing to be attained or acquired. It is living in the moment from the most profound understanding and without egoic attachment to anything. Those who parade their extraordinary spiritual accomplishments in front of others are possibly the least illumined of all. They merely substitute material commodities for “spiritual” merchandise. The Indic heritage knows of many adepts who after years of intense practice achieved a high state of consciousness or astounding paranormal ability only to promptly plunge from grace. The higher the adept’s elevation, the steeper the drop into oblivion and misery. Therefore the authorities of Yoga ever admonish practitioners to be circumspect, to keep their attainments to themselves, to focus on the cultivation of moral integrity, understanding, self-transcendence, and not least service to others.

Lilian?” Kevin needed a moment to register that, indeed, Lilian was standing before him. “What are you doing here? I thought you were taking a bath with the others.” “I was going to,” Lilian admitted, “but then I realized that my mate and I haven’t been able to spend much time alone together because my family kept getting in the way, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for us to bond.” “Bond?” He studied the girl, and eventually realized that she wasn’t looking at his face. Feeling a sense of unease growing in the pit of his stomach, Kevin looked down. His face grew red. He let out a loud “eep!” and tried to cover himself with his hands. “Ufufufu,” Lilian chuckled. “You’re still too cute when you get embarrassed like that.” Kevin tried to glare at her, but the blush on his face lessened the effect. “It’s got nothing to do with being embarrassed and everything to do with common decency,” he insisted, lying through his teeth. “Most people don’t stand around in the nude while someone else is present, not even if they’re dating that person.” “Most people aren’t mated to a kitsune.” “Ugh…” She had him there. “Kevin” Lilian’s eyes were warm and so incredibly earnest that Kevin was unable to look away, “you are my mate; the person I love more than anyone else in this world.” Delicate hands reached up and cupped his face. “This isn’t some random person wanting to see you naked. This is me, your mate, who wants to become more intimate with you. If it helps, I promise not to touch anything below the belt.” Staring at the girl with an uncomprehending gaze, Kevin’s mind became a warzone, a battle the likes of which no one had ever seen before—mostly because it was all happening in his mind. *** The desolate wasteland spread out for miles, its borders traveling far beyond the distant horizon. Cracks traversed the ground like a myriad system of interconnecting spiderwebs. There was no flora or fauna in this wasteland. It was the perfect place… for war. Two forces stood on opposite ends of each other, armies of nearly equal might. Multi-segmented plates clicked together as figures moved and jostled each other. Horned helms adorned the many heads, their faceplates masking their identities. Hands gripped massive halberds with leaf-shaped blades that gleamed like a thousand suns. The army on the northern border wore white armor, while those in the southern quadrant wore red. A moment of silence swept through the clearing. A tumbleweed rolled across the ground. It was the unspoken signal for the battle to start, and the two forces rushed in toward the center, yelling out their battle cries. “For Lilian!!” “For chastity!!” Thunder struck the earth as these two titanic armies fought. Bodies were thrown into the air with impunity. Halberds clashed, the sound of metal on metal, steel ringing against steel, rang out in a symphony of chaos. Sparks flew and shouts accompanied the maelstrom of combat. It was, indeed, a battle worthy of being placed within the annals of history. A third party soon entered the fray. From one of the many cliffs surrounding the battlefield, an army appeared. Unlike the two forces duking it out down below, this army was bereft of nearly all their clothes. Wearing nothing but simple loincloths and bandoleers similar to Tarzan’s, the group of individuals looked identical. Messy blond hair framed bright blue eyes that glared down at the battlefield. With nary a thought, this force surged down the cliff, their own battle cry echoing across the land. “DEATH TO THE CHERRY!!” And so more chaos was unleashed upon the battlefield. ***

The “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” thus, is not either a personal spiritual transformation or the communal event that gives birth to the church. It can only be understood as both together; separately, the ideas do not make sense. The reality of church is expressed in the lives of its individual members, but individual members only encounter God because there is a “community of encounter” that gave them that opportunity. When we embrace God's sanctifying work with our full consecration, we participate in the ongoing reality of Pentecost. We become a part of the church when we accept God's offer of relational restoration in salvation, our initial sanctification, and the Holy Spirit begins working on us right away. We should not think that God withholds the Spirit until we are entirely sanctified because there would be no way for us to grow toward Christian perfection without the Spirit's active and ongoing presence. However, there is a difference between surrendering to the Spirit's presence in our lives and surrendering to the Spirit's full control. There is a difference between being in the church and being the church, the holy people of God who make God known to the world. The first, however, naturally leads to the second as God uses our participation in God's holy community to foster and deepen our own recovery of God's image.